Waking Dream
by spiritore
Summary: Fujiwara Sai is alive and well as one of the top Go pros in Japan. Lately, he's been struggling despite his passion for the game and it takes a literal accident and a boy to change his life. AU.


**Title:** Waking Dream 0/4?  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Pairings:** N/A  
**Disclaimer:** Belongs to Hotta Yumi and Obata Takeshi. I do not own them.  
**Comments:** Fujiwara Sai is alive and well as one of the top Go pros in Japan. Lately, he's been struggling despite his passion for the game and it takes a literal accident and a boy to change his life. AU. So, so AU.

Birthday fic for Dagas! Just hang with me.

_ssssssssss_

Eleven-year-old Shindou Hikaru was less than thrilled with the weather. He glared at the rolling gray sky from under his umbrella and watched the rain come drizzling down. The items in the grocery bag he carried were threatened by the rain every time he took a choppy stride and he could have been more careful in the handling of them.

But he didn't care.

This week had been terrible. First Akari had fallen down the stairs in his grandfather's attic and sprained her ankle, earning him a grounding and the forced company of his grandfather for one day to help him clean up his house as punishment. Then his mother had seen the grades from his last history test and had put her foot down, taking away his allowance and extending his grounding. Nope, his week couldn't get much worse, he thought.

He glanced ahead to the intersection and then back down, grumbling. His mother had been insistant on having a mother and son dinner -- wasn't it always that way with his father gone most of the time?-- and upon discovering that she was running low on some supplies, she had sent him to the nearby grocery store.

Hunching his shoulders, he sniffed and quickly glanced across the street -- seeing only distant traffic -- and stepped into the intersection. The road was dark black with wet and his shoes created splashes each time he lifted a foot and put it down.

Somewhere in the distance, he heard the roar of a car's engine. Someone going too fast, he thought, and then looked up as the roar got louder and his surroundings grew brighter. A car horn honked in the distance.

Bright lights glaring down on him. Tires screeched and he dropped his bag as he leapt for safety.

Too late, too late.

He felt the impact, strangely dull for a brief second before fiery pain bloomed, and his feet flew out from under him.

He was flying with nothing to anchor him and it was terrifying. The world was too bright and the world became etched in golden light and stark black lines. Hurt added definition. This was his world for one brief second. He might have cried out, screamed, but all he heard was the car. Screeching and roaring.

The concrete took his fall unkindly.

_ssssssssss_

Fujiwara Sai, current holder of the Tengen title, pulled out of the drive, adjusting his rearview mirror and grimacing at the wet conditions. Today he should have been home relaxing, studying _kifu_ or maybe playing Net-Go as it was a rare free day during his busy schedule, but his great aunt had called to check up on him and in turn he felt obligated to drive out and see her.

She had been as frail as ever and her wrinkled hands shook like leaves in the wind sometimes. It had been hard not to notice when the cups had rattled against their plates and she had struggled to lift the small pot of tea. It had been even harder not to see as they sat on opposite sides of the _goban_ and her pale, wrinkled hands quivered from time to time as she picked up a stone and placed it down.

Her mind was still sharp, he thought gratefully, no matter how weak her body was growing. Every move she had made had been logical, precise and her eyes had been clear, challenging him to give her a good fight. In the face of her gaze he had done his best, determined not to coddle her, but not to overwhelm. He had won. He usually did.

But it had been a good game. Go was his life and every game he played was a good game with something new to learn, but the games with his great aunt were special. Balanced against all the memories of other go games in his head, the ones with his great aunt stood out; a dance of fighting and retreating across the _goban_ and a picture of his opponent's face compared to her quiet laugh and brisk manner as they conversed over the board where a pattern of black and white stones grew. It was always her first, then the game they had played, never the other way around like the rest of them were.

When she died, he would only have his Go.

His hands unconsciously tightened on his steering wheel. His father had been passionate about Go and though never able to become a Go pro, he had eventually opened a small coffee shop with several _gobans_ set out onto a few tables for play. Not exactly a Go Salon, but a quiet place that still drew its share of customers.

Sai had learned to play Go there and with his father and mother urging him from behind, he grew in leaps and bounds, unstoppable. Until the death of his father of a stroke when he was ten. A stroke at the age of forty. A fluke. Sai faltered then, and while his mother ran herself ragged in teaching herself the workings and finances of the coffee shop, he stopped playing. For two years, he wouldn't touch a stone to play. His mother would watch him with sad, dark eyes and he would try to ignore them.

She finally took action. One day, after the coffee shop had closed, he had found her sitting in front of one of the _goban_s, her hand dipping into the _go ke_ every now and then to place a stone. Her face was solemn and she didn't look the least surprised to see him approach.

'I'm trying to teach myself to play,' she had told him with a wan smile.

'Why?' he had asked.

She had placed her hands in her lap and looked away. 'Your father loved Go so much. I can't let his passion die, so I'll teach myself to play in his memory.'

'I'll - I'll teach you.'

He had won junior tournaments left and right until they told him he had to move onto amateur tournaments. And so he had. He continued to win there, too. During that time, he was often questioned why he didn't take the pro exam, but he told them he had other obligations, which was true.

He helped his mother out at the coffee shop and made his way through high school and while not perfect, things had been good. After graduation, he continued to ignore the pro exam, taking over as much running of the coffee shop as he could for he had started to notice the dark circles under her eyes and the way her clothes hung too big on her.

It wasn't too long afterwards that she told him that she had cancer. Terminal. The word still sounded like the slamming of a door even after six years. With treatment, she could possibly add on four months to her life, she had told him. But it would be a weak existence and the treatment might not slow the disease anyways. Without, she had eight months at greatest estimate and that was being generous.

In the end, she decided to go without treatment. Shortly after her announcement, she had handed him a stack of papers. 'Register for the pro exams. Your love for Go is as great as your father's and you can go where he always wished. You've been holding yourself back for me, but now I'm asking you to go forward. Live your dream for me.'

He had been unable to deny the truth of her words and so he had filled out the paperwork, entering the pro exam as an outsider. He had made his way through the preliminaries and entered the exam, winning and winning and winning. He passed undefeated.

His mother had been so proud

A month later he held her pale hand and listened to her take her last breath.

His mother had cut the ties with her side of the family when she had married Sai's father. His father's parents were long dead. All that was left was his great aunt.

Cars on the streets were few and people on the sidewalks even fewer. The drizzle was keeping people in, he supposed. Sai turned on his blinker and turned a corner. Maybe he would stop by the coffee shop. It wouldn't be busy with this weather, but surely there would be someone around who wanted to play Go and Keigo might appreciate company other than the dry books he read.

A small figure was crossing the street at the next intersection and he started to slow down. A car coming the opposite way caused him to narrow his eyes. Those lights were growing awfully fast and -- too fast! He slammed his hand down on his horn, but he wasn't in time. The other car was sliding ever forward on the wet pavement, its speed too much to stop in a short distance.

Sai watched in horror as the person in the road tried to leap out of the way, but was sent tumbling into the air and then landing on the ground, looking like a broken doll.

The car still wasn't stopping, he realized suddenly. It had veered onto his side of the road and was twisting sideways. Hydroplaning.

Sai wrenched his wheel hard to the right and the other car slid past. But he didn't notice. His car had abruptly come to a stop having collided with a light pole.

His vision went black for an instant and his left arm was strangely numb. Black faded into white and he pulled back, dully surprised at seeing his airbag inflated. His head ached and he blinked, figuring it might take away some of the blurring in his vision. The car was still running and he fumbled around with his right hand for a minute until he found the ignition and turned it off.

Another car was running nearby and he heard shouting. Fearing that his head might fall off for all the pounding within it, he still turned to look. The car was idling on the street and the passanger door was opened where he could see a faint figure half in and out of it. The yelling was coming from there. The car revved and the passenger let out a final shout before climbing in the rest of the way and shutting the door. Immediately, the car zoomed down the street and quickly turned a corner.

He leaned back in his seat, feeling that he should know why the car taking off was a bad thing. Why he was here. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw lights flickering in windows among the houses along the street.

The car. It was important. Sai took a breath, tried to concentrate despite his aching head and the pain that was starting to radiate down his arm. The car.

A person in the road. An impact. But not his own. His eyes flew open and he knew, already reaching for the door handle with his good hand. Hit-and-run, he thought. Was the other person all right? Even alive?

The door opened and he managed to wiggle his way out, so disoriented at first that he slipped and almost fell to his knees. The ground was looking much further than it actually was, so he had to reason with himself not to trust his eyes. Not for walking.

The light rain felt like small drills every time a drop hit his skin and his left arm hung limp at his side. He stumbled past a rolling orange and an opened umbrella.

The person was only a boy.

Sai kneeled beside him, trying to ignore that the boy's legs twisted in all the wrong directions and the blood leaking from the boy's various scrapes and cuts. How could such a small body survive the impact of that car?

He reached down his good hand, placing his fingers on the boy's wrist. It was too hard to find against the own beating of drums in his head and the splatter of rain on his skin. He couldn't concentrate long enough to find the boy's pulse, if he had one at all.

Preparing to withdraw his fingers, the slightest movement of the boy's face froze Sai. The boy's eyes flickered open and a weak moan squeezed out between his lips.

"Hi," said Sai, quietly. The greeting in such a situation was ridiculous, but it was the only thing he could think of.

The boy blinked. "Uh . . . wha?"

Sirens wailed in the distance and he could hear footsteps running towards them. It had taken them long enough, hadn't it?

"You were hit by a car." He squeezed the boy's fingers in his own. "But everything's going to be okay."

He couldn't tell if the boy was crying with all the rain, but he did let out a pained little sob and returned a clinging grip to Sai's hand. "S'hurts."

"Everything will be okay."

He hoped he wasn't lying.

Red and white lights were flashing nearby and Sai had to shut his eyes against them. An authortive voice was telling people to "Make way. Give us room."

"Sir?" Someone gently touched his hand and he opened his eyes to find a plain woman in a paramedic's uniform looking him in the eye. A bright orange bag was at her side. "I need to have you let go of the child so we can work on him." Her fingers were already at work, prying the boy's wrist from him. She was studying him as she did so and frowning. "Were you with the boy when he got hit?"

"No. I - I saw him hit." She had pretty eyes. Dark enough brown that they almost seemed black.

The woman was speaking to him again. "All right. Sir, were you in that car down the road there?"

It was getting hard to think, which was a bad thing a distant thought told him. "The car . . . it drove away."

"Of course, you were." Her hand slipped underneath his braid and rested on his neck, warm against his rain-chilled skin. "I need you to lay down for me."

"Get the oxygen. And then go help Hoashi, Kawasagi," someone called. It was one of the four people who had appeared to kneel over the boy. One of them looked up and nodded, before darting away from Sai's line of vision. The movements of the three left were quick and sure.

"Why, I'm -"

"Your car hit a light post, sir. I need you to lay down and not aggravate any injuries you may have acquired." Her voice was steel.

The ground was hard and uncomfortable, but he couldn't find the energy to complain. The woman gave him a forced smile. She brought his good wrist up to his chest and pressed her fingers to the inside of it. "I'm going to take your pulse and respiration now, okay? Then I'll be asking questions that I need you to answer."

She didn't wait for an answer and he didn't give her one. Out of the eye facing the boy, he could see the paramedics working on him.

"Shit, I hate it when it's a kid."

"Pulse 112 per minute. Respiration 24 and shallow. Hey, you're breathing pretty hard so I'm going to slip this over your mouth so you can breath easier, okay?"

The woman was flashing a light in his eyes and it took him a second to react. She did the same with his other eye and then turned the penlight off, gently patting his good hand. "Can you tell me your name?"

"Fujiwara Sai."

"And how old are you, Fujiwara-san?"

The flashing light was starting to seriously hurt his eyes. He shut them and tried to ignore how cold he felt.

"How old are you, Fujiwara-san?"

"Twenty . . . five."

"Are you allergic to any medication that you know of?"

He shivered, opened his eyes again to stare at those dark eyes. Almost like black Go stones. "No."

She was nodding to herself, while she tore open a small package and pulled out something. Unfolding it, she revealed it to be something like a silvery sheet. It took a moment for his brain to supply the words 'thermal blanket'. She spread it over him. "Can you tell me the date?"

"May . . ." What day was it? His day off. That would make it - "the ninth."

"Sorry, it took me so long. I had to help with a splint on the boy." An older man knelt near Sai's head, scanning him. Sai was starting to wish people would leave him alone so he could sleep. "How's he looking?"

" 92 for pulse, 26 respiration. Disorientation, sluggish dilation of the eyes. Right off the bat, moderate concussion and a possibly dislocated shoulder." Why weren't they talking to him? He wanted to object. "Help me get the neck brace on. He was moving around earlier, but you know how spinal injuries can be."

Two hands firmly gripped the base of his head, almost viselike. "Do you think he's the one that hit the kid?"

"I wouldn't!" Sai managed, but he was ignored by the man.

Something hard and rigid was being placed around his neck. "He's concussed, Kawasagi, not deaf. And no. He's just another victim."

The kid. How could Sai have nearly forgotten him like that? "The boy," he struggled to say, "is he all right?"

Pausing in her movements, the woman looked him straight in the eye. "Worry about yourself, sir." That wasn't enough for Sai and he held her gaze, determined to wring an answer from her no matter how he felt. She faltered and finally collapsed. "Our friends are working on him. I'm sure everything's going to be fine."

To Sai's dislike, it sounded all too similar to what he had told the boy.

False comfort.


End file.
